The seemingly smooth transition in Karnataka is being seen as a departure from the Congress party’s struggle to engineer leadership changes in states in recent years. After more than a year of leadership tussle since the Congress came to power in Karnataka in May 2023, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was asked to resign, making way for his deputy, DK Shivkumar, to take over.

At a breakfast get-together hosted by Siddaramaiah before he resigned last week, the outgoing chief minister told his cabinet colleagues that his decision to quit had come at the direction of the high command. This has come as a surprise because it seems like a rare occasion when a regional heavyweight has given in to the high command’s diktat.

In the past 12 years, since the Congress lost power at the Centre, the Congress high command had tried more than once to engineer changes in state leadership but failed because regional power players refused to fall in line. This gave an impression that the Congress leadership’s writ had weakened after three successive defeats in general elections.

The perception that the Congress leadership is not in full command of party matters was also seen in Kerala, where the party took nearly a fortnight to declare its chief ministerial candidate.

Anyway, the power-sharing formula worked out in Karnataka by the Congress leadership between Siddaramaiah and Shivkumar needed the high command’s intervention to succeed, though the leadership was helpless when a similar arrangement had failed to succeed in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh earlier.

Leadership tussles in states

Like Shivkumar, widely credited for the Congress victory in........

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